As described in the Time Magazine article “Asian Americans are still caught in the trap of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype. And it Creates inequality for All” by Viet Thanh Nguyen a model minority in American culture is a minority that is doing their job in a predominantly white society, but when they do their job too well compared to the white people around them, they face discrimination. An example of a model minority described in the article would be “…engineers and doctors who mostly came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and India – the model minority in the American imagination…”. This label can be dangerous when the minority is faced with the decision of choosing a side in a racial conflict. For example, in the article Nguyen describes that most of the time Asian Americans would choose the side of the whites in a white vs black racial divide because it was “the status quo”. This behavior can be seen as dangerous because it is not helping the minorities that are facing discrimination and it is creating more of a racial divide. Typically, a model minority serves the minority that sets the standard. In a society it is the minority that the oppressive wants everyone to be like.

Nguyen claims that “the end of Asian Americans only happens with the end of racism and capitalism.” because of the inequality both support. Racism promotes inequality between race and unequal opportunity for people of color, while capitalism promotes inequality through wealth as well as opportunity. Essentially what he is saying is that as long as these two things remain there will never be equality in America. We will not be able to remove titles and just see each other as Americans so long as these two things remain within our country.

This essay challenges my thinking about minority groups in the U.S. a lot. First of all, I never knew the term “model minority” and what group it referred to. I have always been aware of the inequality that exists in our country, so this essay has furthered my knowledge about it. It challenges weather the systems we have in place are really the best we can have. It made me think “We can do better than this.”.